Object Details

Title:

Artist/Maker(s):

Culture:

Date:

Medium:

Collotype

Dimensions:

39.1 x 39.7 cm (15 3/8 x 15 5/8 in.)

Copyright:

Status undetermined

Department:

Photographs

Classification:

Photographs

Object Type:

Print

Object Number:

84.XP.452.5

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In 1925 Josephine Baker, an American dancer from Saint Louis, Missouri, made her debut on the Paris stage in La Revue nègre (The Black Review) at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, wearing nothing more than a skirt of feathers and performing her danse sauvage (savage dance). She was an immediate sensation in Jazz-Age France, which celebrated her perceived exoticism, quite the opposite of the reception she had received dancing in American choruses. American expatriate novelist Ernest Hemingway called Baker "the most sensational woman anybody ever saw--or ever will."

Baron Adolf de Meyer, a society and fashion photographer, took this playful portrait in the year of Baker's debut. Given the highly sexual nature of her stage persona, this portrait is charming and almost innocent; Baker's personality is suggested by her face rather than her famous body.

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